Black Tennis Pioneer Dies

Althea Gibson, a sports pioneer who broke the color barrier in tennis in the 1950s as the first black woman to win Wimbledon and U.S. national titles, died Sunday. She was 76.

Gibson had been seriously ill for several years and died at East Orange General Hospital in New Jersey, where she had spent the last week, according to Darryl Jeffries, a spokesman for the city of East Orange.

Gibson was the first black to compete in the U.S. championships, in 1950, and at Wimbledon, in 1951. However, it wasn't until several years later that she began to win major tournaments, including the Wimbledon and U.S. championships in 1957 and 1958, the French Open, and three doubles titles at Wimbledon (1956-58).

"Who could have imagined? Who could have thought?" Gibson said in 1988 as she presented her Wimbledon trophies to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.

"Here stands before you a Negro woman, raised in Harlem, who went on to become a tennis player ... and finally wind up being a world champion, in fact, the first black woman champion of this world," she said.

The eldest of five children, Gibson was a self-described "born athlete" who broke racial barriers, not only in tennis but also in the LPGA. She even toured with the Harlem Globetrotters after retiring from tennis in the late 1950s.

But it was in tennis that Gibson had her greatest success. She picked up the game while growing up in New York, slapping rubber balls off a brick wall. She then met Fred Johnson, the one-armed tennis coach who taught her to play.

Gibson won her first tournament at 15, becoming the New York State black girls' singles tennis champion. Boxer Sugar Ray Robinson helped pay for her travels.

She spent her high school years in Wilmington, N.C., where Dr. R.W. Johnson took her into his family's home and let her play on his grass court. Dr. E.A. Eaton coached here there, and Gibson would later credit him with helping her cultivate the grace and dignity she needed on and off the court.

"No one would say anything to me because of the way I carried myself," Gibson said. "Tennis was a game for ladies and gentleman, and I conducted myself in that manner."

She attended Florida A&M on a tennis and basketball scholarship, and then began her ascent in the American Tennis Association, founded in 1916 for black players.

In 1950, she was the first black to play in the National Grass Court Tennis Championships, the precursor of today's U.S. Open, coming within a point of beating Wimbledon champion Louise Brough.

She broke the racial barrier at Wimbledon the following year, but disappointment at losing nearly caused her to give up the game for the Army in 1955.

A year later, she blossomed during a nine-month tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department, winning 14 tournaments, including the French and Italian championships, and reaching the finals in the three she did not win. She also captured her first women's doubles championship at Wimbledon.

Although beaten at Wimbledon in the singles and losing in the final round at the U.S. championship in New York, she was on top of her game and in 1957 began a two-year run as champion of the top two tournaments in tennis.

Gibson was named Woman Athlete of the Year in 1957 and 1958. Following her 1957 Wimbledon victory, she was given a ticker-tape parade in New York City and an official welcome at City Hall.

More than 30 years passed before another black woman, Zina Garrison, reached the final at Wimbledon (1990), and 10 years after that before Venus Williams emerged as a champion at the All England Club.

"It would be foolish to forget Althea Gibson, also. She was the first," Williams said in 2002 after becoming the first black tennis player at No. 1 since Arthur Ashe.

Gibson retired from the game soon after her 1958 Wimbledon and U.S. titles because there was no prize money and few lucrative endorsements.

"If she had been a half-step later (in her tennis career), she would have been a multimillionaire," said longtime friend and former New York Mayor David Dinkins.

She briefly tried singing, then signed a $100,000 deal to play in exhibition tennis matches before Globetrotter games in 1959.

In 1960, she took up golf in 1960 and became the first black woman on the LPGA tour in 1962, but won no tournaments and earned little money.

She was inducted into numerous halls of fame. In 1975, she became state commissioner of athletics in New Jersey, a job she held for 10 years. She then served on the state athletics control board until 1988, and the governor's council on physical fitness until 1992.

Her layoff from the council marked a turn in Gibson's fortunes. In recent years, the former champion became ill and suffered two cerebral aneurysms and a stroke.

Her finances also declined, and Gibson isolated herself as she struggled on Social Security, not wanting anyone to see her condition.

When news of her situation spread in 1996, admirers around the country held fund-raisers and benefits to ease Gibson's financial burdens.

Letters with cash and checks also began to pour in, including one with two $100 bills from Mariann de Swardt, a ranked South African tennis player.

"I focused on your game when I learned how to play, and I wanted to thank you," the note read.

"She was one of our heroes, and we wanted her to spend her remaining days in dignity," said Pam Hayling Hoffman of Atlanta, a fund-raiser whose father was Gibson's doctor in New Jersey in the late 1950s.

"She was a great woman, who suffered from racism and yet never, never became angry even though it had to have hurt her a great deal," Hoffman said. "It's important for all people who care about human dignity to salute her and recognize her greatness."

Gibson was born Aug. 25, 1927, in Silver, S.C. She lived in East Orange for most of the last 30 years, and Jeffries said the head of the foundation Gibson started to encourage urban youth to play tennis and golf asked the city to release the news of her death.